It is generally known in the prior art to form various laminated components or workpieces that include a cover layer laminated onto a substrate. The substrate provides the structural strength, configuration, and form-stability of the component, while the cover layer provides a visually attractive surface as well as other desired surface characteristics such as a soft-touch cushioned feeling, an impervious covering, and a good finish of the exposed or visible side of the finished installed component. Such laminated components include, for example, various trim components for interior finishing of motor vehicles, such as door panels, headliners, dashboards, column trim covers, parcel shelves, and cargo area load floors.
The substrate may be formed of one or more layers of natural and/or synthetic materials, which may be pressed to have a flat planar configuration or pressed and molded in two or three dimensions to have a contoured molded configuration. The cover layer may, for example, be a sheet of natural and/or synthetic material such as leather, vinyl, woven or non-woven fabric, carpet, etc., which is laminated onto the substrate. It has long been desired to form a finished edge of such a component, so that the edge is more visually pleasing and durable, e.g. to avoid fraying, delaminating, peeling, etc. of the cover layer at the edge.
From the prior art such as German patent DE 44 13 834 C1 and German patent laying-open publication DE 10 2009 008 310 A1, it is known to form a laminated component having a folded-back rim by folding-back a protruding margin or rim of a cover layer around an edge rim of a substrate. The prior art provides known methods and apparatuses for forming such a laminated component. For example, such a known apparatus includes a lower press platen and an upper press platen or stroke platen, which are linearly movable relative to one another in a stroke direction. An upper pressing tool or mold tool is mounted on the upper stroke platen, and a lower pressing tool, mold tool or workpiece receiver is mounted on the lower platen. The substrate and cover layer are received between the upper and lower tools.
The apparatuses and the associated methods known from the prior art have the disadvantage that they are not able to apply the required pressing force, especially in the edge region of the component, in order to produce a uniform, repeatable, durable and strong bonding or adhesion of the laminated cover layer along the edge of the substrate. As a result, it has been found that the folded-back margin or rim of the cover layer can peel or become delaminated from the substrate. In order to eliminate this problem, it is currently a typical practice to use special high-performance adhesives at least in the edge region of such a laminated component, to try to achieve a more strongly adhered and more durable fixing of the folded-back margin or rim of the cover layer on the edge rim of the substrate. However, such high performance adhesives are more expensive than the typical adhesives that are adequate for lamination of the main body field of the cover layer onto the substrate, so that the overall material costs of producing such trim components is correspondingly increased. Also, carrying out such a process and correspondingly equipping an apparatus for applying two different adhesives respectively in the body field and in the edge portion of the component significantly complicates the method and the apparatus.